Tata Motors, the flagship Tata Group company, plans to give a strong sales push to Aria, a sport utility vehicle, The company is taking a slew of steps right from reducing the price to improving its customer interface to push Aria in customer's minds.
It is understood that Aria is struggling to cross the sales target many expected on its launch in 2010. Mahindra & Mahindra’s XUV 500 is priced much lower than Tata Aria’s price of Rs 12.91 lakh.
But now, Tata Motors is selling Aria at a special anniversary price offer of 9.9 lakh rupees, This is a significant cut and Aria is now priced lower than M&M's XUV-500.
Tata Motors has also launched a special "Rapid Resolution Team" for Aria, which will fast-track all complaints received for the car.
The team will address all issued related to the car, the service-centre or its dealers. Not just in India, Tata Motors is also testing Aria to launch it in fast growing South African market, where M&M has already launched its XUV-500.
All that because Tata Aria's sales including peers Sumo, Safari and Venture make up just 4,917 cars in November 2011 compared to 8,000 bookings the XUV-500 has received since its launch in Sept 2011.
In the growing Indian car market, competition is closing in on Tata Motors, which is seeing tremendous pressure to maintain market share. Car makers sell about 75,000 diesel SUV cars annually in India.
The success of Aria is crucial for Tata Motors to sustain its growth in the car market as Aria was the first big launch by Tata Motors last year after the small wonder Nano.
But all eyes now are on the Auto Expo in January 2012 where Tata Motors will unveil a whole-new passenger car. With competition increasing for its existing brands, a new car could help the company boost its passenger car sales, which fell 7 per cent this year.
Shares of the company fell 0.41 per cent in a period of 30 days, while the BSE Sensex index declined 1.80 per cent during the same time.
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